Pregnancy Care

Many pregnant women face challenges, including discrimination and limited access to necessary health care. Some women have even been charged with crimes because of what happened with their pregnancies. We're fighting to ensure that pregnant women have access to the care they need, and are free from discrimination and threats to their decision-making.

Highlights

This testimony outlines the barriers that pregnant and caregiving women continue to face in the workplace, demonstrating that this discrimination functions to exclude women from many high-wage and high-demand jobs that can be critical to achieving economic security. It concludes by making recommendations to address these barriers and advance the rights of working women. The supplemental testimony responds to questions posed by Commissioners at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

This week, the EEOC held a public meeting on unlawful discrimination against pregnant workers and workers with caregiving responsibilities at which experts, including the National Women’s Law Center’s own Vice President and General Counsel Emily Martin, presented compelling testimony setting out the widespread and often blatant ways in which employers continue to unlawfully discriminate in the workplace. Members of the Commission expressed dismay, if not complete surprise, that nearly 35 years after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) was passed in 1978, discrimination on the basis of pregnancy persists, in the words of EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien, “unnecessarily depriving women of the means to support their families.”

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement places reproductive health and rights within a social justice and human rights framework. The movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. In order to make these rights a reality, the movement recognizes that RJ will only be achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.

More Resources

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement places reproductive health and rights within a social justice and human rights framework. The movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. In order to make these rights a reality, the movement recognizes that RJ will only be achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.

Across the country, employers are using their religious beliefs to discriminate against their employees because of their employees’ personal reproductive health care decisions. Women are being punished or fired for using birth control, for undergoing in vitro fertilization in order to get pregnant, or for having sex without being married. The Supreme Court’s recent decision permitting some bosses to refuse to provide insurance coverage of birth control to their female employees highlights how a boss’s religious beliefs are trumping an employee’s health and access to the health care they and their families need.

Employers should not be allowed to use their personal religious beliefs to discriminate against employees who typically come from all different faiths. Fortunately, states have begun to step forward to protect employees, introducing legislation to make it clear that bosses cannot obstruct or coerce an employee when that employee makes a personal reproductive health care decision.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes breastfeeding more accessible and affordable for millions of American women. The health care law requires that all new health plans cover breastfeeding support and supplies. These plans must cover breastfeeding equipment and supplies without cost-sharing “for the duration of breastfeeding,” which means plans may not apply any co-payment, co-insurance, or deductible to these benefits. While insurance companies must cover breastfeeding equipment and supplies, they can impose some limitations such as requiring the purchase, rather than rental, of a breast pump.

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement places reproductive health and rights within a social justice and human rights framework. The movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. In order to make these rights a reality, the movement recognizes that RJ will only be achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement places reproductive health and rights within a social justice and human rights framework. The movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. In order to make these rights a reality, the movement recognizes that RJ will only be achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.